Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Staunton, May 31 – As a result of
the collapse of public services in the 1990s and Vladimir Putin’s health
optimization program more recently, there has been a massive reduction in the
number of birthing homes in rural Russia and an almost 50 percent decline in
the number of hospital beds allocated to pregnant women.

In 1990, government statistics
report, there were 122,000 hospital beds for women about to give birth; in
2015, the last year for which comprehensive statistics are available, that
number had fallen by almost half to 69,400, just slightly more than the 62,900
that had existed at the end of World War II (rbc.ru/society/30/05/2017/592c32549a7947f2b221e488?from=main).

In
major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, improvements in equipment and
personnel in the remaining hospitals has driven down both maternal mortality
and infant mortality; but in rural areas, the reduction in hospital beds for
pregnant women has had disastrous consequences, undercutting Moscow’s hopes for
demographic improvement.

For
Russia as a whole, maternal mortality has indeed fallen significantly, to 10.1
deaths per 100,000 births in 2015 and infant mortality during pregnancy and the
first days of life has also fallen countrywide to 8.29 deaths per 1,000 births.
But in many regions, the situation is very different and very bad.

In
Magadan, maternal mortality is 57 deaths per 100,000 births – almost six times
the all-Russia figure; in Tomsk, it is 48; and in Buryatia and Oryol 35. Infant
mortality is also higher in many regions. The RBC report notes that it is now
18.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in the Chukchi Autonomous District.

These
higher death rates reflect the fact that with the closure of birthing houses in
rural areas, many Russians have to travel enormous distances over often
impassable roads if they go by car or by air if they can afford it – or if in a
particular locale, the health ministry is willing and able to send a plane.

Staunton, May 31 – As percentages of
GDP, the Russian government in 2015 spent half as much on healthcare and three
times as much on national defense as the average countries of the European
Union, Arnold Khachaturov says, a situation that if sustained will lead to
national degradation over time.

But the far worse news, the Novaya gazeta journalist says, is that the
government’s lack of interest in investing in human capital is mirrored by a
lack of interest among most Russians in investing in themselves through health
care and education and thus putting themselves in line for a better future (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2017/05/29/72614-za-nashu-i-vashu-rentu).

Many
have pointed to “the passive adaptation” of the majority of Russians to the
current economic crisis.Most have
simply accepted that the way things are is “the new normal” and that they
cannot do anything about it, an attitude that is making it even more difficult
for the country and its people to escape the current situation.

“Only
15 percent of Russians,” he says citing the findings of the Institute of Social
Analysis and Prediction of the Russian Academy of the Economy and State
Service, are engaged in any active efforts to improve their situation via
raising their qualifications through education or seeking additional sources of
income.

The
other 85 percent is “paralyzed by a feeling of its own impotence and does not
see any prospects for itself.” Consequently, members of this large group “do
not invest in education, their own health, and so on,” a pattern that feeds on
itself and makes the situation ever worse for themselves and Russia as a
whole.

Only
two groups of the population have a positive outlook: “workers of the force
structures and those in the bureaucratic apparatus of the state, i.e., the
representatives of the two most promising professions in the eyes of Russians …
a manifestation of the paternalistic model of power in which the state plays
the key role in solving economic problems of the population.”

This
is especially so in economies based on the extraction and sale of raw materials
and a search for rents.That search
“rapidly becomes the norm not only for elites but also for the entire society,
and shifting away from such arrangements is very difficult even after a
reduction of the size of ‘the pie.’”

Many
have argued that Moscow needs to promote change by providing more assistance to
the power strata of the population and to the creative classes. But there is
little money to do the former and no particular political inclination to do the
latter, Khachaturov suggests.Instead,
the Kremlin has been moving in the opposite direction.

As
a result, he continues, “the share of social payments in the incomes of
Russians last year reached a historic maximum of 19 percent, four percent more
than the same measure in the USSR in which people were building socialism.”
Indeed, “for 40 percent of the population [now,] transfers from the budget
exceed half of their incomes.”

Once
again, many in the Russian capital are talking about improving the situation
with regard to human capital. But “the country has fallen into the trap of
paternalism: above there aren’t the former resources and political will and
below there isn’t a readiness to struggle for economic freedoms.”

One
need not be an expert on economics to understand, Khachaturov says, that “the
scenarios of innovative development require a quite different social
atmosphere.”

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Staunton, May 30 – The Putin regime
has had undeserved success in presenting itself as a defender of Christianity,
but its campaign against Russia’s 170,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, who now face
criminal charges and abuse just for practicing their faith, not only shows how
false those claims are but also represents a threat to all Christians and
others in that country.

Not only have Russian courts
classified the Witnesses as “an extremist organization” on a par with Al-Qaeda
and ISIS, but the regime has sent a signal that some in Russian Orthodox
fundamentalists have taken to mean that they can attack the followers of this
denomination with impunity.

Among the most
horrific of these incidents were an April 30th fire set at the
Jehovah’s Witness hall in Lutsino on April 30, vandalism of a hall in Voronezh
oblast, threats to parishioners in Yekaterinburg oblast, a pogrom of violence
directed at Jehovah’s Witnesses in Izhevsk, and the firebombing of a hall in
Zheshart in the Komi Republic.

If
such actions had been inflicted upon almost any other religious group, there would
have been an international outcry; but sadly, that has not been the case in
these instances.However, for the reasons
Pastor Niemueller outlined nearly 80 years ago in Nazi Germany, there
should be lest those who are attacking the Jehovah’s Witnesses today attack
others tomorrow.